


Piano Keys

by doomedship



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Ficlet, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 09:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16405451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: "She buys a piano six weeks into their relationship." Short fic. A study in Julia Montague.





	Piano Keys

**Author's Note:**

> I was struggling with a prompt, and this came out instead. It's short, but I hope you like it.

She buys a piano six weeks into their relationship. 

She says it's so Ella can practise when she's staying over, now that she's had a few lessons and decided she's absolutely definitely going to be a concert pianist when she grows up. David immediately protests when she suggests it on those grounds, saying it's a ridiculous expense for his daughter's whims, which are prone to changing and changing again in the time it takes her to walk up the stairs. 

But he seems to catch something in her expression that makes him realise, and she is grateful he cuts his objection short. Tips his head curiously and goes back to reading the evening paper. 

Really, she buys a piano because she has a reason to play again.

It's a beautiful instrument, all polished black wood and perfect sleek keys. She can't fit a grand in her flat, which is what she really wants, but this is good enough. 

She's alone in the apartment when it's finally winched in through a window, and carefully slotted in the space she's cleared for it in the living room. 

She sits on the new piano stool, runs her fingers gently over cool white keys. 

She hasn't played since early in her marriage. She used to play for Roger, back when they saw the humanity in one another, and not the beast within. He played too, the elegant childhood inheritance of the well-off, and sometimes they would duet. But, she thinks, even then they quietly struggled over who would play the leading notes. 

She's playing alone now, and she feels a deep satisfaction spreading through her bones as familiar old melodies come flooding back to fingers which have never forgotten the keys. 

"So this is why you wanted the piano," he says, his voice emanating from the doorway. She smiles, doesn't turn around, just keeps playing the bittersweet notes of a long-lost sonata she hasn't heard in a decade. 

She's not quite playing alone after all. 

She feels him walk across the living room, pausing behind her, a moment of question as he holds himself back. In answer, she lifts her left hand from the keys, pats the piano stool beside her, and returns to playing as he slides in beside her and breathes in, as if he's absorbing the music whole. 

There's an energy between them which has never stopped calling since the day they met, and the melody she plays now is a lyric sheet that speaks of what they are. 

In the corner of her eye she watches as he raises his hands to the keys. Feels the tang of surprise when he starts to play alongside her, the lower pitched notes reverberating all the way from her fingertips to the base of her spine. 

Unlike the duets she played a decade ago, this is a piece of harmony. She does not fight him for control of the tempo, the notes, the very fabric of the music. Instead, she lets her chords blend like a caress beneath and on top of his, a graceful weaving of pitch and melody that neither of them fully understands. 

In truth, some of the notes area little off, a little jarring, but it doesn't detract from the sense of wonder she has at this feeling, this unprecedented experience of playing willingly to someone else's songsheet, and letting someone else read from hers. 

She doesn't know what she did to deserve it, but finally she thinks she's found her equilibrium right there on the piano bench next to him.


End file.
